The author explores and explains the role of the director of Maribor General Hospital in the first period after Second World War. The period was problematic on account of the difficult economic situation and changes in the political system. On one hand the hospital suffered relatively large damage due to bombing attacks during the war and on the other it had to face numerous staffing problems, especially with a lack of physicians and trained nursing staff (from 1948 an executive order entered into force forbidding the nursing nuns from performing nursing care in hospitals). The change in the political system required the management of the hospital to be taken over by an individual who enjoyed the political, professional and economic trust of the then authorities. Based on his engagement during the Second World War, the director, Zmago Slokan, represented a form of guarantee for the political system of that time, which nevertheless wanted the quality-based, professional and economic progress of the hospital. Using his personal characteristics, professional medical and economic knowledge as well as political experience, he was able to manage different tendencies to continue the quality-based progress of the institution. Thus, he set a proper foundation for its development in the periods that followed, in the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia as well as in the independent Republic of Slovenia (after 1991). The author discusses the role of the director in the hospital's progress chronologically.
